Chapter Nineteen

Nineteen

Sitting alone in one of the jail cells in the back of the sheriff's office gave Sherry plenty of time to think about all the truly terrible decisions that had led her to this point. There were lots of them. In reverse chronological order, off the top of her head: Not demanding a lawyer while she'd had the chance. Agreeing to investigate Alan's murder instead of taking her shot to get out of Winesap. Getting involved with Alan at all. Adopting a murder victim's fat orange cat named Garfield and renaming him Lord Thomas Cromwell purely because she'd thought it was a funny thing to call a cat, thus dooming her to be haunted by who it turned out was one of history's most obnoxious personalities. Investigating her first murder case, when she could just as easily have minded her own business.

Sherry hadn't been completely honest about Caroline.

She hadn't lied, either. Not exactly. Everything she'd told him was true. She'd just left things out.

Unflattering things, mostly.

Sherry had been twelve years old when she met Caroline. Caroline had been ten but seemed much older: even that young she'd had a preternatural confidence to her that made her seem vastly more attractive and sophisticated than could come across in pictures. Sherry had learned that over and over, through the almost half century of their friendship. She'd bring out a photo of them together to show off her best friend, and whoever she was speaking to would say, "She doesn't look anything like what I imagined when you described her." She was tall and sturdily built, with hazel eyes and an enormous amount of thick dark hair that she liked to wear loose down her back, even after it started going gray. When Sherry described her, she always came out sounding like some sort of beautiful sorceress. In reality, she was just an aging hippie who worked as a receptionist and told wonderful stories that sometimes, in the end, turned out to be lies.

There were a few things that Sherry had not exactly lied about. The first was how confident Sherry had been that Caroline's husband was really, truly abusing her in the way that she said that he was. She had understated things a bit, with the sheriff. Some of Caroline's claims had been…dramatic. At one point she'd made a wild accusation about Howard plotting to kill her for the life insurance money. Normally Sherry had to be away from Caroline for a decent amount of time before the mists cleared and she was capable of noticing which bits of her stories didn't actually make much sense, but that had sounded odd immediately. Howard was a retired dentist who had made excellent money and never spent any of it. Caroline was his younger, healthier wife who made a fairly meagre salary working part-time at a local chiropractor's office. It had occurred to Sherry even in the moment that the financial incentives for murder there all very clearly ran in the opposite direction.

She'd never thought that Caroline would murder her husband, of course. It hadn't even crossed her mind as a possibility. Murder hadn't been a constant in her life back then. And she had believed that awful old Howard was making his wife's life a misery, so it hadn't exactly been a shock when Caroline had shown up on her doorstep one rainy night with suitcases in tow and asked Sherry if she could drive her to the airport. She'd dragged herself across town on foot, she said, because she wanted to be well away from Howard before he noticed her gone, which meant that her car would have to stay in the driveway. It had all seemed reasonable enough. Even if it hadn't, Sherry would have done what she asked, and not because of any particular nobility on her part. It was because it was exciting . It was exciting to feel like she was helping to rescue an innocent woman from her brutish husband on a dark and stormy night, and not very many exciting things had ever happened to Sherry.

The first thing that had given her pause was the suitcases. They'd been very, very heavy. Much heavier than what you would expect for suitcases packed by a Floridian who was flying to Mexico. Even Mexico itself hadn't raised any particular alarms to Sherry—Caroline had been on vacation there once years earlier and hadn't stopped talking about how much she'd loved it ever since—but the suitcases had bothered her. Days later, when the police turned up at her door, she'd had an awful, hysterical moment of thinking that maybe the suitcases had held Howard's chopped-up body. She'd come to her senses almost immediately, of course—why on earth would Caroline have taken his body to the airport with her?—but the image had stuck with her for a long time afterward, appearing abruptly when she was trying to fall asleep at night. She even dreamed about it. Those too-heavy suitcases in her car, something dark leaking from a seam. Later, she heard through the grapevine that the suitcases had been full of cash, that Caroline had spent years withdrawing money from Howard's accounts one small bit at a time, killed him, and gone on one last spree of withdrawals before she escaped to Mexico. This, in retrospect, sounded extremely convincing to Sherry. After all, she had direct evidence.

The second odd thing that she hadn't mentioned to the sheriff was the incident that should have let her know that there was something off about Caroline's story. They'd gotten into an accident on the way to the airport. It had been dark and rainy that night, rainy enough that Sherry hadn't seen the other car come rolling through a stop sign until it was too late. They hadn't been moving fast enough for it to be a serious crash, thank goodness, but the force of it was enough to knock the breath out of Sherry for a moment, to leave her rattled and too aware of the sound of her own ragged breathing. The rain was still pounding hard against the windshield.

They were on a quiet residential street, on a block where a bunch of houses had just been razed, so there was no one else there to see it. Sherry had wanted to do the usual things: to exchange information, to wait for the police to arrive. Caroline had immediately been against it. She'd become almost hysterical for a moment, wailing that she'd miss her flight, that she'd have to go back home to Howard, that she'd never be able to get away from him now. Sherry tried to plead her case with the other driver, to no avail. The other driver was apologetic but firm: she couldn't afford to fix her crumpled fender without insurance covering it.

Caroline had changed then. The tears had dried in what seemed like half a second. She'd reached into her purse and pulled out a roll of cash. "How much?"

Sherry had wondered, briefly, if she'd hit her head in the crash. The other driver's eyes went wide. It was like a drug deal in a movie: the two cars pulled up close together so that they could speak to each other through the open windows, the rain pouring down, and Caroline—ordinary, middle-aged Caroline—peeling hundreds off a roll of bills. Five hundred, one thousand, two thousand, more. Much more than the woman would need to replace a fender for a beat-up old sedan. Eventually the other driver told Caroline to stop counting and took a wad of cash that Sherry was confident she could use to replace her car completely. Her eyes met Sherry's as she took it. They both knew, in that moment, that they were now complicit in something bigger than a fender bender on a rainy Wednesday night.

Neither of them said anything about it. The other driver took her money and drove away. Sherry drove, too. She was almost at the airport before she spoke. "I won't be able to afford the repair on my own, either."

Caroline didn't say a word. She just pulled out another wad of bills and silently tucked it into Sherry's purse. Sherry had left that money there for months after, part of her half hoping that she'd be mugged and the problem would turn into someone else's. She didn't give in and count the money until she got the job in Winesap and needed the cash to pay a deposit on the rent for her cottage. Ten thousand dollars. A stack of hundreds an inch thick. There was no aboveboard explanation for Caroline, a receptionist at a chiropractor's office, to be flying to Mexico with at least twenty thousand dollars' worth of cash in her purse. There was no aboveboard explanation for Sherry to have taken ten thousand dollars in cash under extremely suspicious circumstances, not asked a single question about it, and refrained from mentioning it to the police when the money was still in her bag hanging by the door when they came to speak with her.

It had stuck with her, that money. That whole night stuck with her. She'd never liked driving since. Every time she got into a car, she was brought back to that night: the sickening crunch of the impact, the rain hammering against the roof like heavy fists against a door, that moment of understanding that had passed between her and the other driver, the money sliding into her purse and mingled guilt and pleasure sliding down her throat. Her daily walk up the hill to her cottage in Winesap felt like a sort of penance. The remaining six thousand dollars in cash that could have gone to a used car stayed locked up in a suitcase under her bed.

She was lying down on her cot in the cell now, and drifting in and out of a doze. It was better when she was asleep, because when she was awake, she couldn't stop thinking about Caroline. She'd managed to keep most of what had happened with Caroline in the back of her mind for a long time now. It was easy, when she avoided the things that reminded her of the whole awful incident the most. Driving, or the smell of Shalimar, or the pounding rain. All easy enough to avoid, here in Winesap. It was a little strange, maybe, that she'd never been bothered by being around murder investigations.

"It's because the investigations give you a purpose," said voices in the cell.

Sherry's head jerked up. There was no one else in the small, bare room. "Who is that?" she asked. "Who's there?" She immediately felt like a cliché. Some sort of horrible evil demon creature, of course. At this point in the movie she should know better than to go looking for the comforting, logical explanation.

There were three flies buzzing around the cell. Which was strange, considering the season. They buzzed closer, looping lazily around each other in the air. "You like to feel as if you matter, don't you, Sherry?" Their voices buzzed, too, a horrible whining Greek chorus.

"Oh, stop," Sherry said, and lay down on the hard little cot, curling up on herself to face the wall. "Leave me alone. I can't investigate while I'm stuck in here. Why did you have the sheriff throw me into a cell if that's what you wanted me to do?"

"Because we wanted to talk to you, Sherry," the voices said. "To encourage you to focus your mind on the issue at hand. You've been trying to do things your way again. You've been thinking about running away. But your way isn't any good, is it, Sherry? You wasted all of your youth, your way. Your way made you into someone who never did a single thing that mattered, until your way let you take money to help a killer escape from justice. You've done so much better since you've played by our rules, haven't you, Sherry?"

Sherry swallowed hard. That was what she hadn't wanted to think about this whole time. It was true, was the problem. She'd been doing much better since she came to Winesap. In every way, really. Before she'd come to Winesap, she'd felt irrelevant, inconsequential. Nearly invisible. The feeling had been there since she was very young. She could still remember a few early instances. Her father reading his paper and not looking up when she tried to show him a drawing she'd made. A teacher ignoring her raised hand, even after she'd practically squirmed out of her seat with excitement over knowing the answer. A classmate reapplying her lipstick and remarking, with casual authority, about how annoying it was for us girls to always have boys bothering us for dates. Boys very rarely bothered Sherry: boys didn't notice her at all. She'd married the first one who did notice her right after high school, and then regretted it almost immediately. His noticing her, it seemed, only lasted as long as it took for him to install her in the little house at 184 Coconut Grove so that he would have someone to iron his shirts for him.

She'd gotten herself out of that house after what happened with Caroline. As awful as what she suspected Caroline had done was, something about the sheer, swaggering finality of her exit had spurred Sherry on to make an exit of her own. She served her husband with divorce papers and sold everything she owned in her own name, then used the proceeds to buy a bus ticket and a few nights at a cheap hotel. Eventually, she'd made her way to Winesap, where, after a few weeks of rural village peace and quiet, she'd stumbled into her first murder scene. Everything had come to her after that. She'd met Janine when one of two rival orchid fanciers from her gardening club killed the other with a pair of pruning shears. She'd met Alan when she solved the case of the mysterious body found in the alley next to his shop. Everything here had been born out of death, all her triumphs and successes, all the respect and friendships she had earned. It had all come out of evil, and she'd taken it as her due, as the universe finally shifting in her favor. She'd thought of herself as the protagonist. She hadn't thought of what it all had meant to everyone who'd been hurt so that she could take her starring turn.

"You know that it's true," buzzed a fly, very close to the shell of her ear.

She slapped at the side of her head. The fly hummed lazily out of reach. "Leave me alone ," she said. "I don't understand what you want ."

"For you to play your part," said the flies, buzzing in chorus again now. "Winesap has been nothing but good to you, Sherry. All we ask is that you take that into consideration. We would hate for Winesap to need a new detective to save it from itself."

"But Winesap shouldn't need saving," Sherry said, despite her better judgment. "There's no reason at all for so many people to be killed here. That's the problem, not who solves the murder cases after the poor people are already dead."

The buzzing of the flies changed then. A louder, thicker, meaner sound. Sherry could see more movement from the corners of her eyes. A dark cloud. "That isn't your role, Sherry," said the cloud. "That isn't the job you're here to do. Do you not find yourself arrogant, Sherry, to think that you ought to change the course of things? It's your job to be the detective, Sherry. Shut up and investigate. "

The buzzing was getting louder. There were more and more flies. Sherry couldn't see or hear. She felt as if there were insects in her ears, in her nose, climbing over her eyelids. She opened her mouth to scream and flies poured down her throat. Then, in the distance, she heard a man's voice.

"Excuse me," Father Barry said, and then cleared his throat. "Um. In the name of—Christ. I…abjure you!"

The buzzing eased for a moment, and Sherry hacked a few times and spit out a fly. It had only been one, maybe, which had felt like a whole lot of them. The flies, when they spoke, sounded affronted. "You abjure us? In the name of Christ ?"

"Yes," Father Barry said, a bit more firmly this time. Then he said, "Take that!" and some water splashed against Sherry's face.

"Why are you splashing water around?" the flies asked. They sounded genuinely baffled this time.

"It's holy water ," Barry said. "You—are you the same demon as last time? Because if you are, you might remember that Sherry is a Catholic ."

"I am!" Sherry said immediately, opening her eyes to a squint. The cloud of flies had reduced enough for her to be able to see a group of people standing outside the cell, though she couldn't see many details. "I'm devout! I believe very strongly in the power of holy water to discourage demons!" She wasn't sure how convincing she sounded. Very , she hoped.

"Oh," said the cloud of flies disconsolately.

"And I'm a pagan," said a woman. Charlotte. Charlotte had come, too. "And I've brought, uh. Some extremely powerful crystals and things, that I believe in a lot ."

A cloud of flies couldn't sigh, so it definitely didn't do that. It made a sort of loud, collective buzz. Then it faded away from moment to moment, vanishing like fog on a mirror, until suddenly it was just Sherry alone in her cell again in what felt like ringing silence, blinking owlishly at the small crowd of people standing just outside the bars.

" Barry ," said Todd. She could tell that he was Todd because he was the one of the two of them who wasn't wearing a priest's collar and also didn't look extremely embarrassed. "That was badass . You abjured the demons, bud!"

"I tried , at least," said the bashful Father Barry. "I think that Sherry was better at it."

"Aw, shut up, you killed it," Todd said. He had his arm wrapped around his brother's shoulders and looked absolutely delighted. Charlotte, who was looking at him, also looked delighted. Sherry couldn't really blame her. Todd was wearing a blue scarf that made his eyes look very bright.

"Sherry," Father Barry said, "this is my brother. Todd."

"We've met," Sherry said. "It's nice to see you again, Todd."

"Same," Todd said. "So what did you do to get arrested?"

"I was brought in for questioning about Alan's murder," Sherry said. "I thought that the sheriff was going to let me go, but then things went strange again. With, you know. The…demon things. The sheriff talking with a different voice." She winced, conscious of how ridiculous it sounded when she said it aloud, even though all of them had just witnessed something strange happening in the room. "How did you know to come look for me here?"

"Process of elimination," Charlotte said. "I called you a few times this morning to see if you'd talked to the sheriff yet. When you didn't pick up, I called the library, then I called here when no one there knew where you were, either. When they said that you were being held, I called Father Barry for reinforcements, just in case we had to fight our way out or something. I figured you wouldn't want me to call Janine. I feel like she'd be really judgmental about this."

"Todd was having lunch with me when she called," Father Barry said, in a vaguely apologetic tone of voice. "He wanted to come along."

"For moral support," said Todd. "So are we breaking her out of here? Did anyone bring a hacksaw?"

"Thank you," Sherry said to Charlotte. "I don't think that Janine would like this very much, no. And I don't think that a hacksaw should be necessary. Maybe one of you could go and ask Sheriff Brown if he could let me out? The possession might have worn off by now."

"This town is crazy ," said Todd, with what sounded like extreme satisfaction.